Timmy Dooley (Clare, Fianna Fail)
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Last week, as the Minister is aware, Eir announced plans to roll out fibre broadband to approximately 80,000 homes in the intervention area of the national broadband plan. Imagine announced plans for 400,000 premises earmarked for the intervention area as well. These announcements are welcome for those who will finally have the potential to receive high-speed broadband. These people have been across the digital divide for some time.

For 140,000 households not included in last week's announcements the national broadband plan remains the only show in town. The announcements have several potential knock-on effects and the Minister needs to clarify the situation. What is the position for the households not included in last week's announcement? The first question arises around the size of the intervention area. The rules of the national broadband plan were clear, as I understood them anyway. The plan cannot cover areas where a commercial operator is already in place or has already identified an area as being commercially feasible. Can the Minister confirm that the size of the intervention area has been reduced as a result of last week's announcements?

The second question is around a timeline for the national broadband plan. We understand that the final tender has been with the Department since September. In November, the Minister indicated that he would bring his recommendation before the Cabinet within weeks. Since then we have not heard much detail other than that it will happen within weeks. Perhaps the Minister can give us some clarity on that point.

Have these announcements in the past week or week and a half delayed decisions being brought forward by the Minister and his Department? Had the Minister any foreknowledge or forewarning that these announcements were imminent? Did he know that the companies concerned were working on plans to roll out high-speed broadband to those areas?

The final issue is around cost. We know the Secretary General of the Department of Communications, Climate Action and Environment accepted at the Committee of Public Accounts that it was reasonable to conclude that the removal of the 300,000 homes from the intervention area in March 2017 made the national broadband plan less attractive to bidders. Does the same logic apply here? Can we assume that the decisions of Eir and Imagine to effectively offer a service to potentially in excess of 400,000 homes will impact significantly on the attractiveness of the national broadband plan? I would have thought it was reasonable to assume that the final price and roll-out will be influenced by the size of the intervention area. It is reasonable to assume that the NBP cannot be rolled out in areas where a commercial operator is in place. We know the issues around state aid rules. Prior to the development of the intervention area map there was a good deal of toing and froing between the Department and the European Commission.

It is reasonable to assume the NBP cannot be rolled out in areas where a commercial operator is already in place or has already proposed to roll out a service on a commercial basis. If the intervention area shrinks by up to 400,000 overnight, what will happen to the cost to the State? Has the cost per household of the roll-out increased or decreased as a result of the announcements last week? It was reported previously, in rather informed leaks to The Irish Timestowards the end of last year, that the cost of the national broadband plan to the State was a multiple of what was originally envisaged and outlined in the national development plan. The figures quoted then seemed to suggest that it had increased by between four and six times what had been originally envisaged. Can the Minister provide us with some clarity? How much is Granahan McCourt potentially going to get paid in that case?

Richard Bruton (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael)
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I thank Deputy Dooley for raising this matter. It is of considerable importance. The backdrop to the national broadband plan is exactly as the Deputy described. The purpose of the national broadband plan was to promote commercial investment to the maximum extent possible. Indeed there has been €2.75 billion worth of investment in upgrading telecommunications networks since the national broadband plan process started.

The issue of the intervention area where a subsidy can apply, as the Deputy has said, is confined to areas where it has been established that other companies will not provide a commercial service to an adequate standard. Some time ago it was envisaged that there would be approximately 750,000 premises in the intervention area. However, through monitoring by my Department and discussions with the commercial providers the figure was reduced by 300,000 where Eir undertook to deliver to the necessary standard on a commercial basis. At the same time some areas were added to the amber area or the intervention area provided the Department was satisfied that people in the relevant areas would not be served by companies that had previously signalled an ability to do so.

The position on these new investments, which are welcome indeed, is that my Department is seeking an early meeting with both companies. At this point neither operator has submitted commercial or technical plans for the Department to assess. For the Department to determine that the companies have met the standard to reduce the size of the intervention area we will need to have a certain level of scrutiny of the proposals. The intention of the national broadband plan was to deliver to 100% of premises a high-speed service, which was specified at that stage as being 30 Mbps.

The only other comment to be made is that the two announcements by Eir and Imagine are somewhat different. The announcement by Eir covered expanding the company's commitment to deliver fibre to the home. This indicates the trend of the thinking across much of the sector that fibre to the home is the standard to which we need to move in the long term. The Imagine proposal is delivered through wireless technology so it is somewhat different in its delivery. I realise there were comments and questions in the committee about the capacity to deliver 100% in the way that fibre would. These are issues that the Department will want to work out with the two companies to see what impact they might have on the intervention area.

Timmy Dooley (Clare, Fianna Fail)
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I thank the Minister for that clarity. The final line in the Minister's written statement is that he expects to bring a recommendation to Government on the national broadband plan in the coming weeks. I take it that will be influenced to a large extent by the discussions or presentations from the companies concerned to the Department on the impact of their announcements on the intervention area. I can assume that is the case.

If the intervention area is to change significantly, then the position is absolutely clear. If the 120,000 homes that are still not covered by any of the commercial operators are to be facilitated, then the cost effectively remains the same. This is because of the need to roll out high-speed broadband to the areas concerned. It is effectively the same network that we will have to roll out so the cost per household goes up significantly. Does the Minister accept this is a factor or at least that it comes about as a result of the tardiness of this Government and the previous Government in reaching a decision and failing to roll out the service? As a result of tardiness and delay we are now left with a situation whereby we are effectively going to have to pay the same amount of money to cover far fewer homes.

The public private partnership that was envisaged as part of the national broadband plan bidding process recognised that in addition to the State subvention there would be a revenue return from customer uptake.

If the cherry-picking has been done, given the two announcements, it is going to put a much greater liability on the State and delay further the roll-out of high-speed broadband to those homes.

Richard Bruton (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael)
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I am not going to draw conclusions about the proposals. The figure that Eir and the Department have in common is 335, so there are 35,000 additional premises served by Eir. At the same time, there is a considerable number of premises which the Department has identified, in addition to the 84,000 that were taken out before, where although there was an indication that commercial service would be delivered, it does not now seem that it will be delivered.

On the service which is wireless and based on 5G technology, the point has to be made that both the Commission for Communications Regulation, ComReg, and the Department's experts have always argued - indeed, in common with much of the industry - that 5G networks and 4G networks are complementary technology to fibre roll-out and are not a replacement. There are a number of reasons for that. One is that the wireless technology is line-of-sight, which has restrictions on its capacity. To overcome those restrictions, one would need to build a great number of masts. The evaluation by ComReg indicated that to build the number of masts on the scale needed would cost in the region of €1.8 billion. The second reason is that it is shared or, I think the word is "contested", which means that when a service is delivered, the more people who come on board for the service means that it becomes diluted, which is unlike fibre to the home.

There are issues here that clearly the Department has to tease out with the two companies. It would be untrue for the Deputy to assume that the intervention area has been reduced to whatever the number he quoted as result of these decisions. Clearly, investment in this area is very welcome. It brings forward the delivery of service but we will listen closely to the companies before we give an indication and I will inform the Deputy.